Just this summer, Facebook pumped up the limit to 5,000 from 500 characters for those who are congenitally incapable of keeping things short and sweet. Back in the olden days (March 2009), the limit was 160 characters, a 20-word premium on Twitter.

Still Facebook doesn't let you go on as long as Google+. There the limit appears to be 100,000 characters.

Photo: Facebook founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg shows off the social network's new "time line" feature at its annual developers conference in San Francisco in September. Credit: David Paul Morris / Bloomberg.